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It had found something.

Far beyond Arrhythmia’s Wards, beyond the contained wasteland, beyond the place where the world had hidden its monsters behind purple geometry and old lies… Something pulled back.

My blood turned to ice.

The leash went taut. And this time, something on the other end pulled first.

Knox staggered.

Not much. Not in a dramatic, swoony, Victorian-heroine way, which was disappointing only because I would have mocked him for it forever. It was barely a half step. A hard shift of one boot against the porch boards. One hand snapping out to catch the railing, fingers biting into the old wood so hard I heard it creak.

But Knox MacAllen did not stagger.

Not from pain. Not from shock. Not from giant Hell beasts, century-old trauma, or his brother yelling emotionally devastating things from doorways.

So that little half step scared the absolute shit out of me.

“Knox?”

His head dropped forward. Every line of him locked. The Hellmark on his forearm flared through the rolled sleeve of Guy’s borrowed flannel, black and red light pulsing beneath the fabric like a coal buried under skin.

Behind us, the front door opened with such force that it hit the wall. Guy appeared on the porch with Bernie right behind him, both of them moving fast enough that the old boards groaned under their feet.

“What happened?” Guy barked.

I didn’t take my eyes off Knox. “Something pulled back.”

Bernie went very quiet. “The tether?”

“Yeah.” My mouth had gone dry. “And before anybody asks, no, I do not enjoy saying that out loud.”

Knox’s shoulders rose with one slow, controlled breath.

Then another.

His voice came out low and rough. “I’m fine.”

“Oh, good,” I snapped. Fear made me mean, because mean was easier than terrified. “Then I guess the evil Hell leash yanking on your soul was just doing light cardio.”

His head turned just enough for one hazel eye to cut toward me. Sully’s emerald glow flickered behind it.

“Maisie.”

“No.” I stepped closer, ignoring the way Guy’s protective energy sharpened and Bernie’s Magic lifted around us in a cool, lavender-silver shimmer. “Do not use the serious Dragon voice on me. I saw it. It found something.”

Knox straightened slowly, like every inch of movement cost him something he refused to name.

“What?” Guy demanded.

I opened my Alicorn Sight wider. On purpose. Because apparently, I had learned nothing from every bad decision that had brought me to this exact cursed porch.

The world unfolded around me in threads and pulses.

Guy’s house glowed like a knot in the Ward network, soaked through with layers of Dragon Magic, Hell Sorcery, and Bernie’s beautifully terrifying Necromancer precision. The Wards beyond the property line flickered in the distance, huge and purple and geometric, wrapped around Arrhythmia like the Universe’s worst craft project.

Knox stood beside me, blazing bronze-gold and emerald beneath that ugly black and red wound.

The tether was there. But it was no longer reaching blindly. It had gone taut in one clean, horrible line, stretching away from Knox, through the night, past Guy’s house, past the nearest Ward nexus, past everything my Sight could comfortably hold.